This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The World Of Work Has Changed And It's Never Going Back To The "Good Old Days"
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds,
Wishful thinking is not a solution.
The world of work has changed, and the rate of change is increasing. Despite the hopes of those who want to turn back the clock to the golden era of high-paying, low-skilled manufacturing jobs and an abundance of secure service-sector white collar jobs, history doesn't have a reverse gear (tm).
The world of work is never going back to the "good old days" of 1955, 1965, 1985, or 1995. Jason Burack of Wall Street for Main St. and I discuss these trends in a new podcast, Radical Changes in the Job Market, Now & in the Future (47:37).
Those hoping for history to reverse gears place their faith in these wishful-thinking fantasies:
1. That automation will create more jobs than it destroys because that's what happened in the 1st and 2nd Industrial Revolutions. The wishful thinkers expect the Digital / 3rd Industrial Revolution to follow suite, but it won't: previous technological revolutions generated tens of millions of new low-skill jobs to replace the low-skill jobs that were lost to technology.
Millions of farm laborers moved to the factory floor in the 1st Industrial Revolution, and then millions of displaced factory workers moved to sales and clerk jobs in the 2nd Industrial Revolution.
Even white-collar jobs that supposedly required a college degree could be learned in a matter of hours, days or at most weeks, and little effort was required to stay current.
The Digital/3rd Industrial Revolution is not creating tens of millions of low-skill jobs, and it never will. Even worse for the wishful thinking crowd, the 3rd Digital Revolution is eating tech jobs along with the full spectrum of service-sector jobs.
Those expecting to replace low-skill service jobs with armies of coders will be disappointed, because coding is itself being automated.
The new jobs that are being created are few in number and highly demanding. Jobs are no longer strictly traditional boss-employee; the real growth is in peer-to-peer collaboration and what I term hybrid work performed by Mobile Creatives, workers with highly developed technical/creative/social skillsets who are comfortable working with rapidly changing technologies, who enjoy constant learning and are highly adaptive.
The work that is being created in the Digital/3rd Industrial Revolution is contingent and thus insecure. The only security that is attainable in fast-changing environments is the security offered by broad-based skillsets, great adaptability, a voracious appetite for new learning and a keenly developed set of "soft skills": communication, collaboration, self-management, etc.
I cover all this in depth in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.
The problem is the number of these jobs is far smaller than the number of jobs that will be eaten by software, AI and robotics. the number of workers who can transition productively to this far more demanding and insecure work environment is also much smaller than the workforce displaced by software/robotics.
In short, we need a new system; wishful thinking isn't a solution.
2. That the U.S. can unilaterally demand the right to export its goods and services to others at full price while refusing to accept competing imports. In effect, the fantasy is to return to 1955, when the U.S. could export goods at full pop to the allies who were rebuilding their war-shattered economies. Imports were few because those economies were busy focusing on their own domestic needs.
Trade is a two-way street. Fair trade is a moving target, depending on which side of the trade you happen to be on. Everybody wants to export their surplus at top prices, but competition lowers prices and profits. This forces global corporations to seek cost advantages by lowering the cost of components and labor.
3. The wishful thinkers want strong corporate profits to prop up their stock market and pension funds, but they don't want corporations to do what is necessary to reap strong profits, i.e. move production of commoditized goods and services overseas or replace human labor with cheaper automation.
You can't have it both ways.
Wishful thinkers choose to ignore the reality that roughly half of all U.S. based global corporate sales and profits are reaped overseas. It makes zero financial sense to pay a U.S. worker $20/hour, and pay the insanely expensive costs of sickcare/"healthcare" in the U.S. when the work can be done closer to the actual markets for the goods and services at a fraction of the cost.
Memo to all the armchair wishful thinkers: if you want to compete globally with a high-cost U.S. work force and no automation, be my guest. Put your own money and time at risk and go make it happen. Go hire people at top dollar and provide full benefits, and then go out and make big profits in the global marketplace.
The armchair pundits and ivory tower academics would quickly lose their shirts and come back broke. That's why they wouldn't dare risk their own security, capital and time doing what they demand of others.
4. The wishful thinkers decry the lack of "good-paying" jobs yet they refuse to look at the reasons why employing people in the traditional boss/employee hierarchy no longer makes sense. The armchair pundits and ivory tower academics have never hired even one person with their own money. These protected privileged are living in a fantasy-world of academia, think tanks and foundations, where workers are paid with state money, grants, venture capital, etc.
As I have often noted here, Immanuel Wallerstein listed the systemic reasons why labor overhead costs will continue to rise even as wages stagnate. This means employers see total labor costs rising even if wages go nowhere: it gets more and more expensive to hire workers.
Why I Will Never Hire Anyone, Even at $1/Hour (November 10, 2015)
Then there's the staggering burden of liability in a litigious society, the costs of training and supervising ill-prepared employees and the hard-to-calculate costs of increasingly complex regulations.
5. We can solve the decline of the traditional work model with more education. This is also wishful thinking, as not only is higher education failing to produce workers with the requisite range of skills, the emphasis on higher education has produced an over-supply of people with college diplomas.
The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education.
In the real world, even wages of the most highly educated are stagnating.

The structural changes in the world of work are visible in these charts:
The civilian participation rate is plummeting, despite the "recovery:"

The civilian participation rate for men is in a multi-decade decline:

Part-time jobs do not provide enough income to have an independent household or raise a family, nor do they pay enough taxes to fund the Savior State. The only jobs that count are full-time jobs, and they haven't even returned to 2007 levels despite a higher GDP and a rising population.

As a percentage of GDP, wages have been declining for decades.

Self-employment is the wellspring of entrepreneurs and small business. As you can see, it has also been declining for decades.

It's time to get real, people. Wishful thinking is not a solution. We need a new system for creating paid work and money, and here's my proposed alternative system: A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All. The Kindle edition is $8.45, a 15% discount from its list price of $9.95.
- 52 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -


Perfect underpinning for ever higher housing rental rates.
Actually it is the perfect underpinning for the deflation to come. As it should be mind you.
Who says we need 100% employment??? If automation and tech can create one high paying earner per household and that wage buys a commensurate lifestyle once deflation takes hold that is a good thing!
The productivity of the American worker has never been greater, yet his wage is nowhere near just in this inflationary environment. The FED and .gov have done all they can to "have it both ways". They have destroyed our working class wages through outsourcing, yet have done everything in their power to foster asset inflation. Pull on both sides of a rubber band and it eventually snaps...
If taken at his word Donald Trump offers a better solution than this Smith fellow. A return to a rational nationalism as defined by Trump would bring higher paying jobs to the lower skilled. Sane trade policies with protections for labor could indeed turn back the clock. This would also solve the FED's quagmire of trying to maintain elevated asset prices. I refuse to accept that this nation cannot, given the will, return to a time when products were made and developed here. A time when taxes were low on workers and producers while also STRICTLY enforced on corporations and multi-nationals. Those special interests could not directly bribe .gov via Supreme Court dictate!
Like him or not, and he may yet prove a Manchurian Candidate, but on policy Trump is the only candidate offering real world solutions to the plight of America's Working and Middle Class. NONE OF US SHOULD ACCEPT THAT THIS GOVERNMENT FOR, BY AND OF THE OLIGARCHY IS INEVITABLE.
Amen....this guy is shilling his book, or whatever his link leads to, and defending the status quo. He is also excusing the quacks who presided over the creation of the causes for all those down-sloping graphs.
Sit and wait for the high-paying low-skill gig.
Manufacturing jobs weren't/aren't high paying. They are middle class wages. Instead of gross exageration regarding middle class wages, why not just say that our elected officials have negotiated away the middle class in favor of enriching the top .1% - because that would be a much more honest statement.
I once worked shiftwork in a factory and one afternoon I was standing by my machine waiting for it to finish it's process. A manager came over to me and jokingly said "that looks like an easy job!!" So I said yo him: "I have seen this job posted a couple times and I never saw you apply for it. But if you think it's so great, I will trade postions with you, and even let you keep your fat paycheck - how about it?"
He was caught off guard by my response, but then said there was no way he would do my job even for his pay. And there you have it. All those over-paid manufacturing workers, who do the jobs that white collar workers won't for even twice the pay. So who is over-paid, and who is under-paid? I have worked for 40 years, at a very wide range of occupations. I have been on both sides of the fence many times, and I have never looked down upon anyone that put effort into his work -regardless of type or enviroment. The people that are over paid, are the ones who spend their working hours chatting with co-workers about last nights football game, or surfing the internet for hours on end. Generally, manufacturing workers do neither, as the work pace is too fast, or they are isolated in a separate or noisy enviroment. That being the case, you can likely guess where most of the "over-paid" jobs are.
*hint: it's not manufacturing
history does have a reverse gear but it is all or nothing. we will go back to a circa 1910 work force when the SHTF. affirmative action and outsourcing will be loooong gone. when your life depends on someone doing the job right, you dont hire dindo's.....
Lots of variables to success and failure. What's so funny is a large part of the world is intimating America, but expecting a different outcome. The likely fix for our problem will be a hard reset and it'll be interesting to see how the special snowflakes adapt to the third world lifestyle they want to push on the rest of us.....
And America is imitating Japan. The rabbit hole deepens.
The best paying jobs are all in the fraud industry.
The only reason why we are not going to go back to the good old days is simple. The answer is GREED at the C level and above. These pieces of shit have outsourced the jobs overseas while giving themselves massive bonuses, mostly by triggering compensation via the stock price that has been manipulated by 0% stock buyback loans. If these assholes were not such greedy assholes, we would not be in the situation we find ourselves in.
Isn't that demanded by capitalism?
(I know, the word "crony" gets thrown in front of it and it changes everything)
/junkshieldsup
In a true free market, with a money supply and government not in the hands of parasitic, psychopathic oligach families, no. It can't happen. Someone else comes along and does it better, for less cost, and uses higher wages to lure the cream of the crop away from their current employers. It's a virtuous ircle.
"Crony" economies of any sort have to have a government powerful enough to pre-determine the outcome of a company or sector. Otherwise, there's no one to "crony" with.
- End the Fed.
- Replace regulation with inescapable punishment for wronging or harming others - including envirronmental damages.
- And make ANY public sector employee who uses their position to harm others guilty of treason and subject to inescapable execution.
It won't be prefect, but it will fix 90%+ of what's currently wrong.
That.
Yes, but we all need to do our part, by investing in companies whose earnings are falling, and whose stock price is tanking.
As long as they take down all the Confedrate Flags, change the names of university buildings and eliminate all that rayciss food -- 'mexican' enchilada/'chinese' egg rolls/'ukrainian' piroges/'polish' sausage --- in the student cafeterias, everything will be fine....just fine.
Untill Michelle Obama annouces great changes for College cafeterias!
School kids are blaming Michelle Obama for their ‘gross’ school lunches:
https://www.google.com/url?url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/...
As if they had a choice. Any CEO that insisted on hiring only American labor at Union wages with full benefits, refused to use anything made outside the US and didn't play accounting games went broke 25 years ago.
The world was great up till 2001.....
1971 was when they threw open the doors. Going off the gold standard allows the Fed Gov to subsidize offshoring multi-national corps via deficit spending. The Chinese and others buy US bonds as the offset to their sales, to maintain a peg. Otherwise, they'd have to invest in the 'private' US itself, or lose their market share as their currency would climb against dollars. So, the Fed Gov is selling our sovereignty, via debt, at the same time they are undercutting the US worker.
"They " used the Civil Rights Act (and subsequent Great Society spending) and the Vietnam war to go off of the Gold Standard. It is so simple in retrospect. Now...moving forward one has to eliminate tne Great Society programs. To prevent this... neo Bolsheviks have imported 30MM, low skilled, non white, illegal immigrants, and 40MM "legal immigrants of the same persuasion to make it impossible without huge sociop-political costs.
Thats the way Alinsky's neo Bolshevik model rolls.
All the evil fruit sprung from 1913 demon-seed!
'low skilled'......if muslims come here and then go on welfare....how does low skill have any bearing? saying low skilled emplies that they will work. it is a cover for the 1% to justify the bringing in of this shite.
You can ignore reality
But you can't escape the consequences of ignoring reality.
so
You know it's cold outside when you go outside and it's cold.
We just need some moar wars!
the cost of losing our brightest minds (physicists for example) to finance, will be real.
So...capitalism is making socialism affordable. Got it.
Ironic huh? What's really funny is it's enforced by a giant, out of control, debt laden, militaristic "Democratic" gov that not only enables monopolies and rampant systemic fraud but also stamps out competition out of the barrel of a gun*.
All using other people's money so bad it has to be CTRL-P'ed out of the future. The various "isms" people like to love or hate are completely obsolete and only make sense to statist retards that don't see forests for the trees.
(please refer to millions of bullets bought by post office, usda, fda, so on so forth)
While the tongue in cheek tag was omitted, one can still discern the remains of el capital. Due to all the distortions you list labor has been artificially priced out of its competition with capital through state action. So what's the market's response? Capital is perfectly content to continue w/o labor. Labor then quite naturally becomes a ward of the state. Garchs and proggies get their Huxtopia.
Not exactly. It may be making Socialism possible, but certainly not affordable.
Excellent article and good advice. Get into a niche business.
Good luck. There are no safe niches.
Large corporations with virtually unlimited access to finance, are extremely predatory. One by one, pockets of profitable categories are identified and then tracked, analyzed, and exploited. Yours could be the next market that essentially gets bought out.
my complete username is the grateful unemployed, like the grateful dead. i am the Jerry Garcia of the jobless class. don't listen too hard to the music, just dig it.
so like...Globalization isnt a good thing for America?
:(
we don't need no steenking jobs. just ipo some pos and you're golden.
We could do this whore/whole thing way better. A system that uses much much less force at all levels is possible.
Implamenting such a system is the trick. There is no painless way to do that. But then the best things are seldom easy.
We have come a long way. There is much good and hard work ahead.
The debt aspect of the major (and minor) global currencies is the key limiting factor in human progress. Remove debt from the equation and I think we would see a very positive revolution in our collective lives.
So this dude is just selling a book. Your all fucked buy my book.
Globalization needs to end. Without a whole world government (no thank you, imho) global free trade will do more harm than good. And has. Local economies with a hard backed currency is the only solution. Yup, we need to go back in time or 70%(of the entire world population) need to die. Its that simple. But the .01% TPTB the deep state or whatever you want to call it, will never let it happen. They couldn't be super rich in a sustainable economy.
Yeah I smelled a rat from the beginning. His basic schtick is: "No one is as clever or as insightful as me, so you're screwed." Im sick of hearing from the uber wealthy who are OFTEN in the right place at the right time and have a very specific set of skills that we shouldnt expect everyone to have (because what kind of shitty world would it be if we were all in finance or were "entrepeneurs") that paying people well at all levels of the labor force is simply not feasible. How bout this...I dont give a shit about the stock market, burn that shit down and lets go to local and sustainable where everyone in the community has a stake and no one single person gets to own everything. This will only happen after the blood flows in the streets.
Blame socialism and free shit.
I remember back in the early 80's when the governments in the developed world were all proclaiming that the work week would continue to fall as people became wealthier. Well it did just the opposite. It went from one working family memeber to both parents working. Now it will likely evolve into a two parent working and all the kids to keep your bills paid. If you have falling wages you need deflation in other areas also or it does not work. The reason for the low paying service jobs and falling employment rate is debt. Plain and simple. Unbridled inflationary effects in bubble markets are what caused this disconnect. The fools trying to induce inflation are not doing any of us any favor. Wars do not reset everything. That is what deflation is for.
Kids already are working. It's just less visible because it's in the home. I have my 3 and 5 year old kids cleaning and vacuuming the house already and they help wash dishes and cook so that by the time they're twelve or so I don't have to baby sit them on chores. My five year old also takes care of the chickens and collects eggs. We only have four chickens but it's a fun exercise for them.
I think you'll see more and more kids having to take care of the home since both parents are working, that or the family will look like they live in a garbage dump.
Leaving the State and TV to raise the kiddies, this will work out well. Oh wait, it already isn't working well.
On sale, now for ..."a 15% discount from its list price of $9.95."
I just spoke to a $12/hr worker who’s been here 10 years. He normally runs a CNC but is marking parts this week to cover for vacation. He said he doesn’t make enough to work constantly all day. On the CNC he just programs it then sits and waits for the machine to do the work. He should feel lucky because new hires are making $8.50 doing twice as much work.
Wow, in 1995 I ran a manual upright bridgeport mill, and made $15/hr. CNC programmers/operators were pulling $20+/hr.
Programs his own CNC (i.e doesn't have the manufacturing engineer program the routine for him) and only gets $12 / hr? Damn, he needs to negotiate a better wage. I could see where someone programs per ce a Toyoda grinder and measures a few features with some mics and changes the wheel every so often...
Where I work the easy high volume axle production went to China, India and Mexico. We found a way to adapt, but it's high-tolerance, long cycle time, low EAU business; but if you can do it right (good programs with minimal setup time), you can still be quite profitable.
Well in my world thats a skilled trade , I used to grind all sorts of things before I went into electronics etc, so I believe that there are many safe jobs and they are all technical, and if so many white shirts are very dependant on a few technocrats they may find things a bit wobbbly
if the gov't would just get fuck out of the way, things could go back to the 'good ol' days' in a short amount of time.
Government is like a pathogenic bacterial parasite. It just grows until it kills the host.
Lots of delusion in these comments.
If they took all the folks that are working less then 30 hours a week, making less then $12 an hour, the real unemployment rates would probably be pushing 30%.
Stupid article. Who the fuck wants to be a white collar tool sitting in a cube all day long. Doctors, Dentist, Electricians, Plumbers will never go away and even the blue collar jobs can pay well over 100k. Mechanics will always be needed to repair high industrial equipment.
The only jobs that are going away are fast food workers and cashiers which will be replaced by computers which require a higher skilled and hence higher paid person to fix them. Then you have Obama's Free Shit Army that will never work no matter what.
The white collar tool sitting in the a cube (or in my case an office) creates, innovates, and sets the forth the necessary work instructions for the part of industry that "makes things", which pay enough to afford the services provided by the doctor, dentist, electrician and plumber. We all can't just clean each other's teeth and check each other's plumbing (sorry for the pun).
If you don't own your creations, innovations, and instructions, you're a tool for your employer. Doesn't mean you can't take pride in your work though.
"The world of work is never going back to the "good old days" of 1955, 1965, 1985, or 1995."
"Rivethead" Tails from the Assembly Line
http://tinyurl.com/zdb6wg5
A book about that era. Highly recommended.
(The foreword is by Micheal Moore - don't let that scare you away.)
Tyler should have prefaced the piece for being an ad to sell a book, with nice affiliate link at the end
this guy should just go jump off a fuckin cliff if he really believes what he types
Wait - I saw the headline, now let me close my eyes for a moment and try to guess who the (rather overly prolific) author of this gem is... Hold on...
Think about this.
The tax code can change incentives. Tax codes are social engineering they encourage some things and discourage other things.
In many cases we raise taxes on things that we think are socially destructive (cigarettes and alcohol) and we remove taxes from things we think are good for society (churches and charitable organizations.) Jobs are good for society but we tax them heavily. We should try to remove all of the economic penalties (taxes) from labor.
If a person does work, they and their employer pay several taxes. If a machine/robot does the work it
pays none. When a machine/robot does the work of 10 people then it could be taxed at
the same amount that 10 people would be taxed. That would be fair . . . right?
With this system the tax rate could be much lower and I don’t think we would be lacking for jobs. If we have enough "people jobs" available, then the discrepancy in income should be less.
Workers were responsible for making these labor saving devices (robots/machines).
These devices will replace workers forever. Shouldn't there be some compensation that the machines and their owners, pay back to the workers.
Wouldn't it be reasonable for the machines to at least pay the taxes that would have been paid by the workers and employers?
"Tax codes are social engineering they encourage some things and discourage other things."
Tax codes are weapons, implemented by corrupt politicians bought by corporatists and other special interests, who purchase government force to stifle competition, re-distribute wealth, and to secure political longevity. The idea that they could be conjured wisely and administered in a benign fashion to benefit humanity at large is naive and foolish. Sorry.
"Despite the hopes of those who want to turn back the clock to the golden era of high-paying, low-skilled manufacturing jobs and an abundance of secure service-sector white collar jobs, history doesn't have a reverse gear (tm)."
Low skilled manufacturing jobs... He is full of it! Obviously he has never worked at any skilled job. Does the author think sitting on his lard ass writing this crap that other people are up shit creek is a skill only he and a few enjoy? I've seen commenters on ZH with better ability. Does he think we all want to sit around playing internet games our whole life, that machines are better than lifeforms. I'd like to see a machine buy a Big Mac, or go Christmas shopping or write a book. Could the machines he is talking up have invented the wheel? The pencil? How about art. Seen any paintings by a machine?
The author seems to see the problem with our economy, unemployment and lack of work but still down talks any possibility of humans (in the USA at least) returning to productive lives producing goods for one another. Notice he doesn't explain how an unemployed and skill less nation can possibly afford to purchase goods without income unless he wants us all to become wards of a super welfare state. We all can see that doesn't work by looking at our own nations FSA.
I am a skilled industrial electrical/electronic technician that has had the opportunity to work with other SKILLED people and we were appreciated by the employers. Today they have offshored most skilled jobs and made / are making a joke out of the rest. This will end up costing this nation much more than they think they saved by offshoring.
"Low skilled manufacturing jobs... He is full of it! Obviously he has never worked at any skilled job"
FWIW: Manufacturing has shifted from low skill jobs to high skilled jobs. For instance People working on assembly lines that use to assemble parts and assemblies by hand. Now machines do the assembly and the skilled operators maintain & configure the machines. It does take much skill to bolt a couple of parts together. A pre-computered controlled assembly line probably required 30 to 50 workers to operate, Now it likely less than five. On the flip side, 40+ years ago, most machining was done on manual lathes and mills with very skilled machinists. Today only a few people do the technical work and low skill machine operators load and remove parts at about $15/hr.
I think your being hard on the author, He is just explaing the trend not that we will better off. Unfortunately the American Population continues to dumb down. Few people today do their own car maintaince, most people could not tell you the difference between a box wrench and and adjustable wrench.
" Today they have offshored most skilled jobs and made / are making a joke out of the rest. This will end up costing this nation much more than they think they saved by offshoring."
Thats largely the fault of gov't by imposing regulations which just makes too difficult to hire workers in the USA. FWIW, the growing trend I see is one or two worker shops, replacing 10 to 30 worker shops. People don't want to deal with the hassle of workers and the mountain of red tape. I myself run a single person companies for the same reasons. It also a hassle deal with workers that just want a job and a paycheck and have little or no interest in helping to build a sucessful business. They want some else to do it for them, and just collect a paycheck.
"I am a skilled industrial electrical/electronic technician that has had the opportunity to work with other SKILLED people and we were appreciated by the employers."
Best option is to join the self employeed crowd. Start up your own business and sell services/products to other businesses. Then if you think you can buck the trend, then try hiring workers and you'll see what I mean about the regulatory BS you have to put up with, as well as less than enthusiastic workers that just want to collect a paycheck.
"Those expecting to replace low-skill service jobs with armies of coders will be disappointed, because coding is itself being automated."
This is incorrect. Programming is not automated, at best, there are now better tools for creating programs, but the world still needs programmers to make it happen. Even in Manufacturing humans are needed to do all of the CAD/CAM, design fixtures, configure the machines, etc. The Jobs in IT that are going away are the task oriented jobs that do not involve design, such as installlation/maintaince (shift to virtualization and cloud bases systems), adminstrators, etc.
Yep, he doesn't understand this. He even believes in AI.
Good start Charles. I shall buy your book. I need new ideas because I can't do all the thinking around here.
I don't know if you cover this but "Those who aren't being born are busy dieing. " Bob Dylan.
Eg. The kids who got such a huge buzz from the launch of the Space x. And Musk is employing.
The US has become lazy. Cold fusion? Too hard! New physics? Are you kidding! Have you seen the math?
Life is too easy, living off Mummy and Daddies stored up wealth. Coasting to a stop.
Back away from that computer. You have got to change things. Not me-you. I'm approaching the exit.
It's your world now. Make what you will of it.
yeah, blah blah blah.
What there will not be in the future is 5% living like royalty while 95% beg & starve.
To many guns in to many hands for that to last.